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Wednesday, 1 July 2009

THE VISITORS ON NRG RECORDS - 1978

Formed in Dundee in the late 70's, The Visitors released this track below "Take It Or Leave It" which came out in 1978. Although it's not a full-on punk track, it does have a rawness that was becoming more popular in the pop charts back then, and it did get a thumbs up on the John Peel show too.The label - NRG Records - was also Dundee based, at 17 Union Street to be exact.

12 comments:

Wonder who ran NRG records as they also released singles by The Drive and Alternators. Never hear anyone quoting those bands other than to say The Drive werent punk! So Dundee had an independent record label and no one liked / rated them?

Yes, but its more complicated than that. No-one in the punk scene in Dundee had heard of ANY of the bands on NRG's roster. NRG never approached ANY of the emerging bands in Dundee in 1979-1981. The Alternators were an old r n b band "turned" punk to jump on the bandwagon - even wearing boiler-suits come on! Drive were rubbish. The Visitors....erm...just "visiting" punk.....

It's really sad that people are still trying to categorise genres of music. Grow up please! There is music you like and music you don't like. And when one person talks about a punk scene in Dundee there were other pubs with bands playing other forms of music. Dundee should thrive on a diversity of musical cultures and not get hung up on the views of an ageing "punk".I was in the original Visiters who never pretended to be punk. In fact John Peel referred to them as sounding like an uptempo Gerry Rafferty. NRG were just trying to promote Dundee music regardless of how you want to label it. There should be more labels like that.

I think it was great Dundee had an independent label back then releasing 7's. As one of the other posters said, why didnt they release any music from Dundee's up and coming punk bands at the time? Grouchos did the same thing, releasing music by 'clubby' bands.

The answer is pure and simple, both NRG and Grouchos released singles by bands they liked and did not put labels on them like "clubby". It's great, that, back then Dundee labels released singles by bands they liked instead of bands they could sell. Labels like punk, heavy metal, pop, are all labels by marketing people out to sell an image and not music. It seems that some people commenting on this blog are a marketing person's dream believing in the punk ethos in much the same way that AC/DC fans probably believe that there is higway to hell. Same difference.

1. we were not an r&B band before2. we did not wear boiler suits3. there were two bands the Alernators and the Visitors only reason is that we were the playing on the visitors (Jim Thompson) record, and the lable NRG was ours and they were the only singles recorded on it

I played bass on the Drive single, Jerkin. Pat Joyce asked me to play 2 songs with a band for the NRG label which he helped set up. A friend of his called Gus wanted to escape his mundane life by causing controversy by releasing a song about masturbation. An article in the Sunday Mail follwed headed "Banned Punks Cut Own Sex Single" There was never any band called The Drive. After 1 rehearsal we went to Edinburgh and recorded the 2 songs. I never got paid, never even received a copy. Gus faded back to the mundane existance he came from. Ronnie Jack, drums, Ronnie Neish, guitar, Some other bloke, guitar, Gus, vocal, me, bass. Not one of the musical highlights of my life.